Hi all,

New to these forums but figured this would be a good jump off point for my question.

I'm trying to create a script that will check to see if all files in a folder are in use. If they are in use, ignore it; if they're not in use, change their ownership and move them to another directory.

So far this is what I have.

FILESRC=/path/to/source
FILEDST=/path/to/destination

if ! fuser $FILESRC/folder/*.*
then
chown user:group $FILESRC/folder/*.*
mv $FILESRC/folder/*.* $FILEDST/folder
fi

When executing the script it will tell me that there's an open file but won't proceed with the rest of the commands. Can anyone help with what's wrong in my script?

Welcome to LQ, hope you like it here.

- shell scripts usually start with a hash bang line (you know: '#!/bin/whatevershell'),
- debug your shell script by using debug switches (have 'set -vx' as the second line in BASH),
- selecting files this way is not good: easier to use 'find', ensure output is white space safe, use a "while" loop, run 'fuser' on each file inside the loop and use the exit value ('$?') of the fuser command ('>/dev/null 2>&1' output) to select actions,
- shell scripts usually end with an exit line (you know: 'exit 0').


# Here's some Bash scripting guides:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginne...tml/index.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/man...ode/index.html
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sh.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
http://wooledge.org/mywiki/BashFAQ?a...direct=BashFaq
http://wooledge.org/mywiki/BashPitfalls

One more way to do it is using lsof but yes you have to use a loop, while would be good here as stated above and input as filenames in the directory then do a
and compare the exit status if the file is being read or opened $? will be 256(1) otherwise zero.
move the dir

will also show what's in use there.